


How Remus Lupin Failed to Write a Single Word About The Dutch Goblin Wars of 1764

by shaggydogstail



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, Humour, M/M, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 00:50:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10865595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaggydogstail/pseuds/shaggydogstail
Summary: All Remus wanted was a couple of hours peace to finish his History of Magic essay.  Was that really too much to ask?Apparently it was.





	How Remus Lupin Failed to Write a Single Word About The Dutch Goblin Wars of 1764

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jennuine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennuine/gifts).



The boys' dormitory was usually deserted on a Sunday afternoon, allowing Remus a rare moment of peace and quiet to get on with some studying. Well, he wasn't _enjoying_ it as such, but he thought it might at least get some of the work due in the following day done, at least until Sirius bounded into the dormitory, waving a sheet of parchment and wearing an expression of complete triumph. Looking up, Remus set his homework to one side and braced himself for the worst.

'Got it!' Sirius announced as he landed on Remus' bed and thrust the paper under Remus' nose.

'Got what?' asked Remus, deliberately avoiding taking hold of the parchment. He'd heard all about those forensic scientists in Muggle Studies and wasn't taking any chances.

'My new flat,' said Sirius, whose enthusiasm was apparently undiminished by the fact that Remus had backed away from him so much that he was pressed against the headboard. 'Isn't it brilliant?'

Remus took the parchment from him at last and examined it carefully, reasonably sure now that it wouldn't explode or be used as evidence of his involvement in criminal activity. It was a letter from Shaftsbury and Pangbourne, a firm of wizarding solicitors, confirming that Sirius Black was now the proud owner of 46b Paradise Street, Battersea. He made a mental note that, should he ever have cause to take legal action, he would not instruct the firm of Shaftsbury and Pangbourne. Anyone implicated in allowing a man who listed 'breaking noises' as his favourite sound to own property was clearly disreputable. Still, Sirius was very happy about the whole thing, and Remus couldn't quite find it in himself not to at least make the effort to be pleased for him.

'That's nice,' he said. 'Are you sitting on my quill? Only I've half a foot of parchment to finish for History of Magic by tomorrow.'

Sirius sat up very straight, looking affronted. 'Moony, how can you not be more excited? Don't you realise what this means for us?'

Remus blinked. 'Well, I assume it means that you will be freed from the tyranny of being spoilt rotten by the Potters, if that's what you mean. I'm not sure what it's got to do with me.'

Sirius sighed and rolled his eyes, giving Remus that bemused, slightly patronising expression he usually saved for Peter's denser moments. Remus bristled instinctively.

'You can come and stay with me in the holidays,' Sirius said, in a tone that suggested this was a Terribly Important and Significant Sentence.

'I suppose I could visit for a few days,' said Remus. 'Not for too long though, on account of Auntie Violet’s coming over and Mum says I've to entertain her for a bit and–'

'Moony!' Sirius bounced on the bed in frustration. 'Never mind Auntie Violet! Put all thoughts of Auntie Violet out of your mind! I have a new flat, Moony. A flat that does not contain interfering dorm mates, over-protective matrons, beady-eyed teachers or wandering house elves. You know what that means, don't you?'

Remus has a feeling he knew exactly what it meant. 'Enlighten me,' he sighed.

The glint in Sirius' eye was positively maniacal. 'It means,' he said, 'that we can Do It.' Sirius crawled up the bed and into Remus' lap. 'Y'know, shag. Fuck. Screw. Bugger each other's brains out. Make the beast with–'

'Yes, yes, Sirius, all right,' snapped Remus. 'I understood you the first time.'

The trouble was, Remus understood a bit _too_ well. Opportunities to have sex in or around the castle were limited, to say the least, and they’d agreed to put off any actual shagging until they could find somewhere a bit more private than the prefect’s bathroom or any of the schools ‘never quite as deserted as they seem’ classrooms, which basically meant waiting until the holidays. It was an excellent plan, thoroughly sensible, and Remus fully supported it. Or at least, his brain did.

His cock, on the other hand, had very different ideas, and was strongly of the opinion that as Sirius was sitting in Remus’ lap, talking about shagging, and there wasn’t anyone actually watching right at that moment, it was the perfect opportunity to throw Sirius back on the bed and fuck his brains out. Remus wasn’t stupid enough to try reasoning with his own cock (there isn't a teenage male alive who's ever won _that_ battle), so he decided the best option was to put temptation (i.e. Sirius) out of his way.

‘Moony?’ said Sirius, tearing Remus away from the vicious struggle of brain v penis for a moment. ‘Don’t you want to?’ He cast his eyes downward, no doubt aiming for one of his more blatantly manipulative ‘poor puppy’ looks. Which wouldn’t have affected Remus in the slightest (well, not _very_ much) but it did have the unfortunate effect of allowing Sirius to stare directly at Remus’ rather obvious erection. 'Oh,' he said, looking back up at Remus, with an expression of almost unbearable smugness on his face. 'I think, perhaps, you _are_ interested, Moony.'

'Padfoot, get off me,' said Remus, shoving Sirius unceremoniously out of his lap. Sirius tumbled in an ungainly heap at the foot of the bed, then sat up, frowning.

Remus knew he had to think fast, which meant coming up with a convincing excuse to get rid of Sirius before the conniving little bastard could start conspiring with his own cock against him. There was no point telling Sirius to leave him alone to finish his essay, as Sirius would only tell Remus to copy his. (Bizarrely, Sirius always got top marks in History of Magic--for years Remus had thought that he'd been learning Binns' lessons in his sleep, by some form of osmosis, but he'd recently discovered that Sirius simply submitted rather sensational works of historical fiction in lieu of actual essays. Sirius maintained that Binns wasn't really as boring as he made out, as the more blood-and-guts and outrageous sex scandals Sirius worked into his essays, the higher Binns marked them.)

No, the only way out of this was to come up with a convincing lie...

'I've, um, got something to talk to you about,' said Remus awkwardly as he fiddled with a spare piece of parchment, playing for time. 'It's, er, it's a bit difficult, actually.'

'Moony, what's wrong?' asked Sirius, crawling back towards him. He looked genuinely concerned, and Remus almost felt a bit guilty until his cock observed how very attractive Sirius looked on his hands and knees and his brain retaliated by reminding him that all was fair in love and war.

'You should keep back,' said Remus, holding out his hand to stop Sirius getting any closer to him.

'You're not sick are you?'

_No, but sometimes when you pout like that_... Remus shook his head to re-establish his brain's superiority. 'No, no, I'm fine, but there's something I have to tell you,' he explained slowly. 'It's about the, um, sex thing.'

'Oh.' Sirius looked rather deflated and sat back on his haunches.

'You see, it's not that I don't want to shag you,' Remus said. His cock gave another demonic little twitch, which Remus interpreted as meaning right this instant. 'It's just that I'm not sure that I _can_.'

Sirius glanced down at Remus' crotch. 'I really don't think--' he started

'I mean, I don't know if I ought to,' Remus clarified. 'Without telling you first.'

'Without telling me what first?' Sirius narrowed his eyes suspiciously. 'You haven't got the clap, have you?'

'No!' exclaimed Remus. 'It's not that. It's a...werewolf thing.' Remus gulped. He really was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Sirius was still listening intently, so he continued. 'You know that book we read about werewolves in third year? _Ye Darke and Tragick Curses of Ye Cursed Beastes_?'

'That old rubbish?' Sirius scoffed. 'The one that said the presence of a werewolf causes crops to fail and milk to sour? Load of bollocks.'

'Yes, well, it turns out that it wasn't all bollocks,' sighed Remus. 'The bit about mating rituals was pretty accurate.'

'Mating rituals?'

'Werewolves, um, mate for life.' Remus ducked his head down, hoping that Sirius would think he was embarrassed, though in truth he didn't trust himself to keep a straight face.

'That's just an old warlock's tale.'

'No, it isn't,' said Remus. 'If we, you know, shag, then we'll never be able to be happy apart. If we did split up, we'd both pine away miserably. And become impotent.' The final remark was directed more at Remus' cock than at Sirius, though Remus was sure it wasn't listening.

'Oh, come on, Moony, you don't expect me to believe all that, do you?' Sirius didn't look very convinced. Time for the amateur dramatics.

'Do you really think I'd lie to you about a thing like that?' asked Remus, looking Sirius straight in the eye. Sirius looked very much like he was thinking that, yes, Remus would do that exact thing, which Remus couldn't help but feel a little wounded by, however unreasonably. 'I want you to leave now,' said Remus, pointing at the door and sniffing rather dramatically. He hoped he wasn't overdoing it. 'And don't come back until you've thought carefully about this kind of commitment.'

'Moony...'

'Just go!' Remus tossed his head to show that his word was final. Sirius huffed as he got off the bed, but he left without any further protests.

Remus picked up his History of Magic essay and went back to work, feeling remarkably pleased with himself. Not only had he got rid of Sirius for at least the rest of the afternoon, but hopefully this would stop Sirius pestering him about sex for the last few weeks of term. It occurred to him briefly that he might have put Sirius off a bit _too_ thoroughly, in which case he'd be screwed. (Or rather, he wouldn't.) Then he realised that if Sirius' cock had anything like the hold over his mental faculties that Remus' did on his own (and he strongly suspected it _did_ ), he was pretty sure he could put the whole thing right simply by turning up on Sirius' doorstep and saying, 'oops, made a bit of a mistake there. Let's fuck.'

Satisfied with a job well done, Remus turned his attention back to the Dutch Goblin Wars of 1764. With any luck he'd finish his essay and still have time to do a bit of reading for Charms.

He'd barely managed to cover the basics of the Onechte Verklaring Treaty when Sirius returned, looking sheepish and obviously concealing something behind his back. Remus rolled his eyes and threw his quill down in annoyance. 'Padfoot, I thought I told you to go away and think about what I said?'

'Oh, Moony,' Sirius gushed as he hurried to Remus' side. 'I did try to do as you asked, really I did, but then I realised: there's nothing to think about. I just needed to listen to my heart.'

'You did?' Remus gulped. There was a slightly manic edge to the way Sirius was looking at him which Remus found very frightening indeed.

'Yes, I did,' said Sirius earnestly. 'You see, Moony, I think they left something out of that book; it's all well and good to say that we'll be bonded for all eternity once we've...after we _make love_ , but don't you see? I feel like that already. You're my soulmate, Moony, and without you I'd surely perish.'

Sirius produced a bunch of flowers from behind his back--lupines and dogwoods--and presented it to Remus, gazing at him adoringly. Remus stared back in horror.

'I'll understand, of course, if you don't feel the same,' Sirius continued with a sad smile. 'I'm sure I could scarcely hope to be worthy of your love. So...I'll give you all the time you need to make your decision. In the meantime, beloved, know this: all sexual activity aside, in my heart, I'm already mated to you. Whatever you decide, I love you, and I always will.'

And with that he kissed Remus gently on the forehead and with one last, adoring smile, turned and left the dormitory.

Remus collapsed on the bed, groaning in frustration. He was _never_ going to get that bloody essay finished. He buried his head under a pillow and wished for the world to end.

Unsurprisingly, the world did not end, and Remus himself was saved from an untimely demise by featherdown suffocation by the arrival of James and Peter.

'Moony, why are you trying to kill yourself with a pillow?' asked Peter as he tugged the cushion out of Remus' grip.

'History of Magic essay,' said James, picking up Remus' abandoned textbook. 'Honestly, Moony, I know we've all felt like we can't go on after one too many Goblin Wars, but there's no need to end it all.'

Remus just blinked and let out a choked sob. He suddenly had a horrible mental image of James giving Sirius away at the altar in some horrible kind of mock-wedding. There were doves. _Pink_ ones. With bows.

'You all right there, Moony?' James waved a hand in front of Remus' face and frowned at Remus' lack of movement. 'What's wrong?'

'It's...Sirius,' said Remus.

'Oh, is that it?' James rolled his eyes. 'Lovers' tiff?'

'No, it can't be that,' objected Peter. 'We just saw Padfoot running through the common room, remember? He was positively beaming.'

'So we did,' conceded James. He turned back to Remus. 'OK, then, what's he done this time?'

_Nothing_ , thought Remus miserably, _Sirius hasn't done anything wrong at all or at least nothing to deserve getting his poor, virgin heart broken for the sake of a History of Magic essay_. A little part of Remus died inside. (Sadly it wasn't one of his warring body parts. Collateral damage.)

'He, um...' Remus shuffled guiltily. 'He hasn't done anything, not really. I just didn't realise he could be so...gullible.'

It took James a while to respond; he scratched his chin thoughtfully and tapped his foot a few times. 'You know,' he said at last, 'the traits people most often underestimate in Padfoot are his intelligence and capacity for evil.' He gave Remus a Very Significant Look.

'Uh,' Remus mumbled. ' _Oh_! Oh, that _bastard_.' Remus was up off his bed and half-way to the door in one movement. 'I'll fucking _kill_ him.' He raced out of the dormitory, slamming the door behind him and thundered down the stairs with murder on his mind.

'What was all that about?' asked Peter once he'd gone.

'I try not to think about it too much,' said James.

~*~

When Sirius needed to think about something, or to get away, he always went to one of two different spots by the lake. The first was a large, flat rock beneath a willow tree (a normal one, that neither whomped nor wept, though it did wilt a little). It was clearly visible from the lawn in front of the castle and Sirius liked to sit there and gaze into the water in the manner of some brooding, Gothic hero. Remus hoped that if Sirius was there he might be able to hex him and make him fall into the lake.

He wasn't there.

Bugger.

Remus trudged off to Sirius' _other_ hiding place (right around the far side of the lake, behind some boulders and practically inside the Forbidden Forest). Sirius only went there when he really did _vant to be alone_ or when he was hoping Remus would join him for a spot of quiet snogging. _Ha_! thought Remus as he climbed over some loose rocks to get to Sirius' hiding place.

Sirius was lying flat on his back on a patch of grass, with his hands behind his head and his eyes closed. His wand was nowhere to be seen, but Remus knew better than to let that lull him into a false sense of security. 'I was thinking, maybe just a simple ceremony,' said Remus as he approached, 'with a few close friends.' He sat down on the grass next to Sirius. 'And perhaps we could write poems and recite them to each other.'

Sirius opened his eyes. 'Oh, give it up Moony,' he said lazily. 'It was a poor effort and you know it.'

'Perhaps,' said Remus. 'It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment.' _And my cock was stealing much-needed blood from my brain at the time_ , he thought with a twinge of resentment.

Sirius rolled onto his side so that he was facing Remus. 'You know, you could have just told me,' he said. 'I wouldn't have taken it that badly.'

'No, of course you wouldn't,' said Remus, rolling his eyes. Sirius always had the greatest respect for other people's need to study.

'I mean it,' said Sirius. 'If you want to split up, then you should just say so. There's no need to come up with some stupid lie to trick me into dumping you.'

'I don't want to split up with you!' said Remus, panicking slightly. 'Oh, Padfoot, I'm really sorry...I didn't mean...I wouldn't...I mean, I really like you.'

Sirius snorted. 'There you go again,' he said with a smirk. 'It's like cursing Grindylows in a cauldron with you sometimes.'

'What?' gasped Remus. 'Oh, you conniving little git!' He launched himself at Sirius, wrestling Sirius onto his back and pinning him to the ground. 'I hate you, you know.'

'No, you don't.' Sirius grinned up at him, wriggling a bit but making no attempt to get away. 'You're absolutely crazy about me. So much so, in fact, that you can't even think about anything else while I'm in the room, far less do any bloody homework.'

Remus huffed; Sirius could be such an arrogant bastard sometimes. Especially when he was right. 'My libido likes you: doesn't mean that I have to.'

'Your _cock_ likes me,' said Sirius, rolling his hips upwards. There was no way he could have failed to notice the rather pressing evidence of the truth of that statement. 'You ought to like me too, since I'm going to let you copy that essay you're going to be far too busy snogging me to write.'

Remus' conscience put up a half-hearted argument about how he'd never learn anything that way, but his cock was even more vociferous in its objections that it had been before, and when Sirius rolled him over on the ground and kissed him, his brain decided that he' suffered enough for one day, and was entitled to have a bit of fun.

~*~

It turned out that Sirius hadn't actually written the essay for History of Magic either, but he gave Remus an old one about the Russian Goblin Uprising of 1422, cheerfully telling Remus he could just swap around a few of the words and dates and Binns wouldn't notice the difference, while he got on with composing his latest fictional masterpiece over breakfast. Remus wasn't entirely sure that anyone would be convinced a war had been triggered by an unemployed Troll masseuse calling the Chief Warlock of the International Confederation of Wizards a 'pus-ridden poppinjay' or that pirates were involved in the conflict at all, but by that time it was too late for him to do anything else.

So he was all the more surprised when he got an 'O' for it. It made his brain hurt, and his cock claimed a victory on points.


End file.
